


By The Books

by sasha_hawkeyes



Category: Death Parade (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Parents, Child AU, De-Aged Characters, F/F, Fluff, Kid Fic, Single Parents, kid!Decim, kid!Ginti
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-05
Updated: 2015-04-05
Packaged: 2018-03-21 09:03:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3686316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sasha_hawkeyes/pseuds/sasha_hawkeyes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>please don't judge me for this, i just saw arbiterquin's child au on tumblr and we started talking and i got some ideas... god save me from the lesbian single mom fics pls</p>
    </blockquote>





	By The Books

**Author's Note:**

> please don't judge me for this, i just saw arbiterquin's child au on tumblr and we started talking and i got some ideas... god save me from the lesbian single mom fics pls

Nona wasn't sure what she did wrong.

Truthfully, she followed those parenting books like religious scripts, setting her foot in the prints the books carved out for her. She never dared to color outside the lines, because of the sheer fear of messing her son up with incorrect upbringing. She did everything by the book for the first nine years of Ginti's life, so there were supposed to be no deviations from the chapters she had so closely inspected. Everything was supposed to follow the given instructions. And however, there she was, exiting the principal's office with a red face and a redheaded boy by her side, unsure of what to do next.

None of the parenting books she bought covered this. None of them told her how to deal with her current predicament as the doors of the principal’s office closed behind her. It was strange, being without a compass like this. So, Nona did the only thing she could think of. She bowed down, making herself even smaller than she usually was, pushing her son down in a forced bow as well.

“I apologize profusely for Ginti’s actions, Miss,” she addressed the woman before her. Nona’s voice rang out clearly through the school’s deserted hallways, muffling the mumbles of protest her son spewed out. With a light tug of his fiery hair, however, he zipped his lips until Nona stood up straight, moving her hand from Ginti’s scalp and letting him straighten as well. The boy stood by her side, nervously shuffling his feet as he ruffled strands of wild, red hair on the back of his head.

“Oh, please, it’s fine,” the other woman spoke up. She graced Nona with a positively charming smile, one that sent electricity down the long strands of her bluish hair. The mother standing before her was certainly beautiful, Nona noted, admiring her neat hair the color of dark mahogany and eyes dyed pale green. “It was just a li’l roughhousing, and I think my Decim took his part in it, too. Ain’t that right, Dec?”

The other boy, Decim, looked up with his mother, humming in agreement. His blue eyes held a certain maturity, one that Nona hadn’t hoped to see in a boy who was barely even nine years old. At first glance, he seemed frail and gentle, with white hair as soft as clouds and skin as pale as perfect porcelain, but Nona could see much more than simple fragility in those clever eyes of his. Decim might have given off that strange, frail first impression, but she knew better than to judge a book by its cover. After all, the cut on Ginti’s lower lip didn’t come to be out of the clear blue sky as some form of divine punishment – Decim must have put up more of a fight than she originally presumed.

When the principal first called her down to Ginti’s school after hours, Nona was about ready to wring her son’s flimsy neck like a chicken’s. Fighting in the schoolyard was unbecoming of him and she wouldn’t let it slide so easily, not from her own flesh and blood! But Ginti was fire and Ginti was uncontrolled and Ginti was anger and rage, just like his unruly red hair and eyes shining bright as gold hinted. This wasn’t the first time he had gotten into a fistfight with one of the other kids, no. It was only the first time he got caught.

“Mom, can we go now?” fire and rage and anger himself asked, tugging on the fabric of his mother’s suit jacker. Nona gave her son a small glare, one which forced the fear of god into Ginti’s very bone marrow, before looking up at Decim’s mother.

She gave her one of those winning Nona™ smiles, one which brought clients into her company and signed contracts, one which said that she was the best businesswoman around. “I still feel like none of this would have happened if my son weren’t such an angry little time-bomb,” Nona gently offered, bowing her head in retribution once more. “I apologize again for all the trouble we have caused you, and my son does as well.”

“Apologies,” Ginti murmured after his mother’s prompting hand flicked out to smack his shoulder gently.

“Really, it’s all fine,” the mother assured Nona, laying a gentle palm atop her shoulder.

“Is there anything I could do to make up for the terrible first impression you must have of my son and me?” she asked.

“You could take me out on a date, if you’re so set on apologizing.” The other woman smiled again and, if it weren’t for Nona’s nerves of steel, she would have blushed down to her waist, drenched in blood-red embarrassment. It had been a long, long time since someone could make Nona feel this way, feel this surge of electricity upon eyesight. It was something she had forgotten how to feel – the sweating palms and blushing cheeks and heart rushing in her chest, her stomach tangoing through her abdomen, dancing along to the symphony of butterflies which fluttered around her entire body.

She must have taken longer to respond than she was supposed to, because the brunette’s palm fell from Nona’s shoulder, her face losing some of its upbeat, happy-go-lucky composure. “Ah, I guess you don’t swing that way. Sorry for makin’ you uncomfortable.”

“No! No, nohohoh, I swing a lot of ways, left and right and up and-“ Nona’s mind was running a mile a second, rummaging for proper words to spit out. “It sounds as good an apology as any, Miss…”

“My name’s Quin,” she grinned, fishing through the pocket of her jeans to pull out her cellphone. “Let me get your number.”

 

* * *

 

The ride home was mostly silent, driving through familiar streets and passing well-known buildings in a blur. Nona’s cheeks were still steaming red as the aftermath of the encounter in front of the principal’s office, mind rerunning episodes of Quin’s effective smile.

“Mom?” Ginti piped up from the back seat. “Did you even hear me?”

Nona glanced in the rearview mirror, catching a glimpse of her son’s slightly worried gaze. She forced herself to regain her composure, shooing every thought of Quin and precious smiles into the back of her mind. “What?”

“I asked if I’m grounded?” Ginti repeated.

“Why would you be grounded?”

Ginti fixed his mother’s reflection in the rearview mirror with a dead stare and a raised eyebrow. “Mom, I got in a fight with that Decim kid. You were at the principal’s office when I got my butt chewed. This a few minutes ago?”

“Oh!” Nona exclaimed. She pulled into their driveway, fumbling with her seatbelt and pondering her son’s words. “Yeah, totally grounded. No dessert for a week grounded.”

“But we don’t even have dessert with our dinner.”

Nona stepped out of the car, slamming the door shut. She waited for Ginti to follow suit, unbuckling his belt and slipping out of the back seat of their car along with his schoolbag. “You want to make it a month, Gin?” she taunted.

“No, sir.”

Nona sighed, ruffling the boy’s hair as she pulled him into a one-armed hug. She leaned down to kiss the top of his head and felt the familiar pull of Ginti’s arms tug tightly at her. “What am I going to do with you, Gin?” she mused. “You keep picking fights were there aren’t any.”

“…Sorry.”

She crouched down, looking up at her son. Nona arranged the few strands of loose hair around his face and tilted his chin up to get a better look at his bruised, busted lip. Decim knew how to land a nice punch, of that much Nona was sure. “Please just… You don’t have to get along with the world, Ginti. Just try to be friends with this one boy. You could use a friend.”

“And you could use his mom for that date you’re having, right?”

Nona smacked her son’s cheek playfully. “Get inside before I ground you for real. I swear, I might even bring some cake with me tomorrow and eat it in front of you just to watch you suffer.”

“No fair!” Ginti protested as he marched to the front door.

Nona hummed. “Life’s not fair, kid.”

Yeah, sometimes it really wasn’t fair. Sometimes, even if you followed the instructions and drew perfect lines in the sand, life would go astray. Nona did everything by the books – from her job to raising her son – and there were supposed to be no bumps in the smooth road she had planned out. But sometimes, these bumps were of the good kind.


End file.
